On July 2, 1916, Mr. Albert Ashenberger, the meteorologist at the Weather Bureau Office in Mobile received a telegram from the central office in Washington concerning a tropical disturbance near Swan Island that was moving north. The information was published in the Mobile Register the following day. On July 4th, ships were warned not to leave the harbor. Warnings were frantically disseminated by telegraph and along railways on the morning of the 5th, especially concerning expected high tides on the Alabama and Mississippi Coast.
The storm came ashore along the Mississippi Coast near Gulfport around 5 p.m. on July 5th. The early season hurricane produced a wind gust to 106 mph at Mobile and 104 mph at Pensacola. The storm surge at Mobile was nearly 12 feet, the highest that had ever been observed in the Port City. The downtown area was inundated.
The dying tropical cyclone meandered into Mississippi as steering currents collapsed. Twenty four hours later it was just west of Meridian. On the 7th, it would turn eastward, drifting across the border into Alabama. Moving at less than fifty miles a day, by Saturday evening the 8th, the remnant low was centered just west of Birmingham. The remnants of the hurricane were dumping huge amounts of rain over Mississippi and Alabama.
A quarter of an inch of rain fell on the 5th in Birmingham, but on the next day, the floodgates opened and 4.58 inches fell. As the low turned eastward on the 7th, it really began to pour here with 7.02 inches of rain reported. During one 24 hour period, 8.84 inches of rain fell in the rain gauge, a record that would stand until Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
Crops losses from the rains that resulted from the slow moving July hurricane were catastrophic over Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee.
Another hurricane would make landfall near Pensacola later in the month and dump more heavy rain on Birmingham, where the monthly rainfall total reached 20.16 inches, a monthly record that still stands.
